The present invention relates generally to a plant pulling apparatus and more particularly to an apparatus for pulling weeds from sugar beet plants.
Various types of machines have been devised to grasp a plant and pull it from the ground, or pull at least a portion of the plant from the main plant itself. Plant pulling machines of this general type can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 1,538,829 issued to Larson in 1925, U.S. Pat. No. 2,397,249 issued to Dostal in 1946, U.S. Pat. No. 2,648,185 issued to Dahlman in 1953 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,833,065 issued to Hamminga in 1974. Notwithstanding the fact that there have been numerous plant pulling devices, many of which have been patented, still the most prevalent method in use today for removing weeds from sugar beets is to hire large numbers of laborers to walk down the sugar beet rows and pull the weeds by hand. Apparently, manual labor is more effective, dependable and perhaps cheaper to use than the machines shown in the prior art, at least those which require many special and separate motors, belts or chains which move in various directions to produce somewhat complicated machines.